It is time for Zorba to start meditating, and it is time for the people who are meditators not to allow themselves to escape from the world... Only in completion is there bliss. Only in completion have you come home.
Osho

Monday, 29 April 2013

It's like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it's dense, isn't it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting. But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlique, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually--if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning-- you're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as--Mr so-and- so, Ms so-and-so, Mrs so-and-so--I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way. I know I'm that, too. But we've learned to define ourselves as separate from it.

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.

Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him. Then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, 'This I am today; that I will be tomorrow.'

Surely a man needs a closed place wherein he may strike root and, like the seed, become. But also he needs the great Milky Way above him and the vast sea spaces, though neither stars nor ocean serve his daily needs.

Physician, heal yourself: thus you will heal your patient too. Let his best healing-aid be to see with his own eyes him who makes himself well. (Zarathustra)

This is great advice to those who want human consciousness to reach to its highest possible peaks. The first thing is: “Physician heal thyself.” You should be completely free of all superstitions, all senseless dead pasts, you should be new every moment. This will be your health. And this will help people: seeing you, seeing your awareness, seeing your love, seeing your compassion, seeing your blissfulness will be the proof that others are wrong and they have to change. It is not a question of arguing; it is a question of presenting your life in the new light, so those who are standing in darkness can see that they are standing in darkness, and that is the cause of their misery and their sickness.

There are a thousand paths that have never yet been trodden, a thousand forms of health and hidden islands of life. This is where anybody who has intelligence will fall in love with Zarathustra. He is so different from other teachers of religion.

Mahavira says, “I have said the last word; now there is no more to be discovered. All that has to be discovered about human consciousness I have discovered. There will not be a twenty-fifth tirthankara.” Gautam Buddha says the same thing. Mohammed says, “There have been prophets before me, but after me there will be no prophets, because I have brought all knowledge; now nothing is any longer hidden.”

Zarathustra has a very different approach, very humble. There are a thousand paths that have never yet been trodden, a thousand forms of health and hidden islands of life. Man and man’s earth are still unexhausted and undiscovered.

He does not want to be the last word. On the contrary he wants to be the beginning, and leaves everything open. “Go on changing as you come into new spaces. You don’t have to be in agreement with me, because there are thousands of paths which are untrodden, and there are thousands of islands on the earth and in the inner being of man which are not yet discovered. So don’t remain clinging to me — move on!”

He is saying, “I teach you movement. I don’t give you a fixed doctrine; I only give you an impetus, an incentive, a challenge.” A real master is always a challenge: challenge for new discoveries, challenge for new unknown spaces, challenge for faraway stars. He simply gives encouragement. He helps you to be on the wing, and leaves the whole sky open for you.

Watch and listen, you solitaries! From the future come winds with a stealthy flapping of wings; and good tidings go out to delicate ears. You solitaries of today, you who have seceded from society.... Be careful about these words: You solitaries of today, you who have seceded from society, you shall one day be a people: from you, who have chosen out yourselves, shall a chosen people spring — and from this chosen people, the superman.

It is unfortunate that it has not happened yet. Still.... You are solitaries today; my name for solitaries is sannyasins. Still you are few. Twenty-five centuries have past, but the words of Zarathustra sound as if they are being spoken today.

You solitaries of today, you who have seceded from society, you shall one day be a people. Twenty-five centuries ago he was hoping — and it is still a hope. I am still hoping that you will not remain few. I have even started calling you “my people”.

From you, who have chosen out yourselves, shall a chosen people spring — and from this chosen people, the superman.

Truly, the earth shall yet become a house of healing! And already a new odor floats about it, an odor that brings health — and a new hope! I can simply repeat his words, because they are as true today as they were twenty-five centuries ago. It is very saddening; it is unfortunate, but perhaps he came too early, ahead of his time. Every genius comes early, but Zarathustra seems to have come too early.

Perhaps now is the time that we can make this earth a temple of healing — not only of the body but of the soul too, a holy place where everybody is whole, not split, not schizophrenic. It is still very small, but it is there in the hearts of many intelligent and courageous people. A longing for a greater life, for a higher life, for a better life has already arisen. Perhaps the spring is very close. Perhaps we have come at the right time.

An odor that brings health — and a new hope! We want this hope to become a reality; it has remained a hope too long. It is time that the dream is realized and if we cannot realize this dream, then there is no future for humanity.

This gives me great hope, because the mad crowd has come close to a global suicide. And now there will be only two alternatives: either transform yourself into a new man, the superman, or get ready to disappear from this earth. And I don’t think that man wants to die. I don’t think that trees want to die or the birds or the animals. I don’t think that life wants to commit suicide.

Hence, most probably, it will choose to transform itself and give birth to the superman, and drop this whole arrangement that politicians around the world are making ready for you, for committing suicide. Now the forces of life and the forces of death are confronting each other. The forces of life are fragile, just like an odor in the air. And the forces of death are very strong.

Still, death cannot win over life. Hate cannot win over love. The ugly cannot win over the beautiful.

Existence is energy, the movement of energy in so many ways and so many forms. As far as human existence is concerned, this energy is kundalini energy. Kundalini is the focused energy of the human body and human psyche.

Energy can exist either manifested or unmanifested. It can remain in the seed or it can come up in a manifested form. Every energy is either in seed or in manifested form. Kundalini means your total potential, your total possibility. But it is a seed; it is the potential. The ways to awaken kundalini are ways to make your potential actual.

So first of all, kundalini is not something unique. It is only human energy as such. But ordinarily only a part of it is functioning, a very minute part. Even that part is not functioning harmoniously; it is in conflict. That is the misery, the anguish. If your energy can function harmoniously then you feel bliss, but if it is in conflict — if it is antagonistic to itself — then you feel miserable. All misery means that your energy is in conflict, and all happiness, all bliss, means that your energy is in harmony.

Why is the whole energy only potential, not actual? It is not needed as far as day-to-day life is concerned; it is not required. Only that part becomes functional that is required, challenged. Day-to-day life is not a challenge to it, so only a very minute part becomes manifest. And even this small, manifested part is not harmonious because your day-to-day life is not integrated.

Your needs are in conflict. Society requires one thing and your instincts require something quite contradictory. Social requirements and personal requirements are in conflict. Society has its requirements; morality and religion have their requirements. These conflicts have prevented man from being a harmonious whole. They have made man fragmentary.

In the morning one thing is required; in the afternoon something else is required. Your wife requires something from you; your mother requires something quite contrary. Then day-to-day life becomes a conflicting demand on you, and the minute part of your total energy that has become manifest is in conflict with itself.

There is also another conflict. The part that has become manifest will always be in conflict with the part that has not yet become manifest; the actual will always be in conflict with the potential. The potential will push itself to be manifested and the actual will suppress it.

To use psychological terms, the unconscious is always in conflict with the conscious. The conscious will try to dominate it, because it is always in danger of the unconscious manifesting itself. The conscious is under control, and the potential, the unconscious, is not. You can manage the conscious, but with an explosion of the unconscious you will be in insecurity. You will not be able to manage it. That is the fear of the conscious. So this is the other conflict, greater and deeper than the first: the conflict between the conscious and the unconscious, between the energy that has become manifest and the energy that wants to be manifested.

These two types of conflict are why you are not in harmony. And if you are not in harmony, your energy will become antagonistic to you. Energy needs movement, and movement is always from the unmanifest toward the manifest, from the seed toward the tree, from the dark toward the light.

This movement is possible only if there is no suppression. Otherwise the movement, the harmony, is destroyed and your energy becomes an enemy to you. You become a house divided against itself; you become a crowd. Then you are not one; you are many.

This is the situation that exists as far as human beings are concerned. But this should not be. This is why there is ugliness and misery. Bliss and beauty can come only when your life energy is in movement, in easy movement, relaxed movement — unsuppressed, uninhibited; integrated, not fragmentary; not in conflict with itself, but one and organic. When your energy comes to this harmonious unity — that is what is meant by kundalini.

Kundalini is just a technical term for your whole energy when it is in unity, in movement, in harmony, without any conflict; when it is cooperative, complementary and organic. Then and there, there is a transformation — unique and unknown.

When energies are in conflict you want to relieve them. You feel at ease only when your conflicting energies are released, thrown off. But whenever you throw them off, your life energy, your vitality, moves downward, or outward. The downward movement is the outward movement, and the upward movement is the inward movement. The more your energies go up, the more they go in; the more they go down, the more they move out. If you throw your conflicting energies out you will feel relief. But that is just like throwing your life away in bits and fragments, in installments. It is suicidal. Unless our life energy becomes one and harmonious, and the flow becomes inward, we are suicidal.

When you are throwing out energy you feel relieved, but the relief is bound to be momentary because you are a constant source of energy. Energy accumulates again and you will have to get rid of it again. What is ordinarily known as pleasure is just a throwing off of conflicting energies. Pleasure means that you are relieved of a burden. It is always negative, never positive. But bliss is positive. It comes only when your energies are fulfilled.

When your energies are not thrown out but have an inward flowering, when you become one with them and are not in conflict with them, then there is a movement inward. That movement is endless. It becomes deeper and deeper, and the deeper it goes, the more blissful it becomes, the more ecstatic.

So energy can have two possibilities. The first is just a relief, a throwing off of energies which have become a burden to you, which you could not utilize and with which you could not be creative. This state of mind is anti-kundalini.

The ordinary state of human beings is anti-kundalini. Energy moves from the center toward the periphery because that is the direction you are moving toward. Kundalini means just the opposite. Forces, energies, move from the periphery toward the center.

The movement inward, the center-oriented movement, is blissful, while the outward movement gives both happiness and misery. There will be momentary happiness and permanent misery. Happiness will come only in gaps. Only when you hope, only when you have expectations, is the gap there. The actual result is always misery.

Happiness is in expectation, in hoping, in desiring, in dreaming. It is only that you are relieved of your burden; the happiness is totally negative. There is no happiness as such, but only the momentary absence of misery. That absence is taken as happiness.

You are constantly creating new energies. That is what is meant by life: the ability to go on creating the life force. The moment the capacity is gone, you are dead. This is the paradox: you go on creating energy and you don’t know what to do with it. When it is created you throw it off and when it is not created you feel miserable, ill.

The moment the life force is not created, you feel ill; but when it is created, you again feel ill. The first illness is that of weakness, and the second illness is that of energy that has become a burden to you. You are not able to harmonize it, to make it creative, to make it blissful. You have created it and now you don’t know what to do with it, so you just throw it off. Then you create more energy again. This is absurd, but this absurdity is what we ordinarily mean by human existence: constantly creating energy that constantly becomes burdensome and that you constantly have to relieve.

That is why sex has become so important, so significant because it is one of the greatest means to rid yourself of energy. If the society becomes affluent, you have more sources through which energy can be created. Then you become more sexual, because you have more tensions to relieve.

There is a constant creating of energy and throwing out of energy. If one is intelligent enough, sensitive enough, then one will feel the absurdity of it, the whole meaninglessness of it. Then one will feel the purposelessness of life. Are you just an instrument to create energy and throw it out? What is the meaning of this? What is the need to exist at all? Just to be an instrument in which energy is created and thrown out? So the more sensitive a person is, the more he feels the meaninglessness of life as we know it.

Kundalini means to change this absurd situation into a meaningful one. The science of kundalini is one of the most subtle sciences. The physical sciences are also concerned with energy, but with material energy not psychic energy. Yoga is concerned with psychic energy. It is a science of the metaphysical, of that which is transcendental.

Just like the material energy that science is concerned with, this psychic energy can be creative or destructive. If it is not used, it becomes destructive; if it is used, it becomes creative. But it can also be used noncreatively. The way to make it creative is first to understand that you should not realize only part of your potential. If one part is realized and the remaining, major portion of your potential is unrealized, it is not a situation that can be creative.

The whole must be realized; your whole potential must be actualized. There are methods to realize the potential, to make it actual, to make it awake. It is sleeping, just like a snake. That is why it has been named kundalini: serpent power, a sleeping serpent.

If you have ever seen a serpent sleeping, it is just like that. It is coiled; there is no movement at all. But a serpent can stand up straight on its tail. It stands by its energy. That is why the serpent has been used symbolically. Your life energy is also coiled and asleep. But it can become straight; it can become awake, with its full potential actualized. Then you will be transformed.

The experience of truth is just washing away the dust that goes on gathering on your mirror-like consciousness.

Basho says:

Dewdrops —

How better wash away

world’s dust?

The dewdrops may be small but they can cleanse your inner eye, your mirror, which has gathered so much dust. And that dust has to be cleared.

Only then can you see the depth in things, the life in things; a world full of love, a world full of blessings, a world that could be a dancing place but has been turned by stupid politicians into a battlefield.

When more people become buddhas — they are already buddhas — when more people remember their being buddhas, this world will have a totally different aroma, a totally different fragrance, a totally different ecstasy.

Right now, what we have done, we have made the world a tragedy. Each step we are moving further into tragedy, and at the end of the tunnel is death.

Leave worries aside and you will be surprised by the beauty of the sky and the colour of flowers, of the freshness of the breeze and the generosity of the sun. You will feel you are part of creation, and life will start to make sense. The greatest wealth is to appreciate what we have and what we are.

The ordinary mind always throws the responsibility on somebody else. It is always the other who is making you suffer. Your wife is making you suffer, your husband is making you suffer, your parents are making you suffer, your children are making you suffer, or the financial system of the society, capitalism, communism, fascism, the prevalent political ideology, the social structure, or fate, karma, God...you name it!

People have millions of ways to shirk responsibility. But the moment you say somebody else — X, Y, Z — is making you suffer, then you cannot do anything to change it. What can you do? When the society changes and communism comes and there is a classless world, then everybody will be happy. Before it, it is not possible. How can you be happy in a society which is poor? And how can you be happy in a society which is dominated by the capitalists? How can you be happy with a society which is bureaucratic? How can you be happy with a society which does not allow you freedom?

Excuses and excuses and excuses — excuses just to avoid one single insight that “I am responsible for myself. Nobody else is responsible for me; it is absolutely and utterly my responsibility. Whatsoever I am, I am my own creation.” This is the meaning of the sutra.

Drive all blame into one

And that one is you.

Once this insight settles:

“I am responsible for my life — for all my suffering, for my pain, for all that has happened to me and is happening to me — I have chosen it this way; these are the seeds that I sowed and now I am reaping the crop; I am responsible — once this insight becomes a natural understanding in you, then everything else is simple. Then life starts taking a new turn, starts moving into a new dimension. That dimension is conversion, revolution, mutation — because once I know I am responsible, I also know that I can drop it any moment I decide to. Nobody can prevent me from dropping it.

Can anybody prevent you from dropping your misery, from transforming your misery into bliss? Nobody. Even if you are in a jail, chained, imprisoned, nobody can imprison YOU; your soul still remains free. Of course you have a very limited situation, but even in that limited situation you can sing a song. You can either cry tears of helplessness or you can sing a song. Even with chains on your feet you can dance; then even the sound of the chains will have a melody to it.

Next sutra: Be grateful to everyone

Atisha is really very very scientific. First he says: Take the whole responsibility on yourself. Secondly he says: Be grateful to everyone. Now that nobody is responsible for your misery except you — if the misery is all your own doing, then what is left?

Be grateful to everyone.

Because everybody is creating a space for you to be transformed — even those who think they are obstructing you, even those whom you think are enemies. Your friends, your enemies, good people and bad people, favorable circumstances, unfavorable circumstances — all together they are creating the context in which you can be transformed and become a Buddha. Be grateful to all — to those who have helped, to those who have hindered, to those who have been indifferent. Be grateful to all, because all together they are creating the context in which Buddhas are born, in which you can become a Buddha.

From the state of wonder, there are two paths. One is of questioning — the wrong path — it leads you into more and more knowledge. The other is not of questioning but enjoying. Enjoy the wonder, the wonder that life is, the wonder that existence is, the wonder of the sun and the sunlight and the trees bathed in the golden rays. Experience it. Don´t put a question mark, let it be as it is.

Never lose your balance when you are under pressure from external circumstances. Remember these things come and go like clouds being chased by the breeze. Set yourself firmly on the immutable and eternal rock of your existence.

Theists, atheists, both are victims. The really religious person has nothing to do with The Bible or the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita. The really religious person has a deep communion with existence. He can say yes to a roseflower, he can say yes to the stars, he can say yes to people, he can say yes to his own being, his own desires. He can say yes to whatsoever life brings to him. He is a yea-sayer.